


made it back to a place we call home

by trustingno1



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2012-10-26
Packaged: 2017-11-17 01:58:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustingno1/pseuds/trustingno1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You'll do anything to find him," she says, and it's not a question.</p>
<p>(post-ep for 4x24, but references 1x24 and 3x24).</p>
            </blockquote>





	made it back to a place we call home

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posting my older fics to AO3. Originally posted 21.05.2012

She finds him in the kitchen, fixing his tea like he still belongs here, like nothing ever changed.

"Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?" she asks, and he takes a seat at the table, pausing before he answers, to blow on his drink.

"Your hair looks lovely today."

"Damnit, Jane," she curses, softly, and he lifts his chin a little, like maybe he's ready to have this conversation. "What's the story with her? Is she - is she an ex-girlfriend?" and she's not even trying to contain her disbelief.  "What - _who_ -" and she's truly at a loss.

"Of course not," Jane says, mildly, and she snorts, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Yeah. Silly me," she mutters, glancing away.

Jane places his teacup back onto the saucer. "Red John sent her. She watched me for weeks before making her move. She posted my bail. She came to my motel room. She brought me chicken soup and made me eggs," and, not for the first time this week, she has _no idea_ what he's talking about, "We..." he trails off, and Lisbon closes her eyes against it, briefly.

"I don't need to know the details," she says, flat and uninterested.

"Lisbon," he says, voice low, a little urgent. "As she was falling asleep-" he's holding her gaze, that wide-eyed look he gets when he talks about Red John.

"You hypnotized her," she doesn't ask, and Jane's grin is slow and genuine.

" _Exactly_."

"What if ... what if Red John's already hypnotized her?" she asks, narrowing her eyes as she tries to work it through, because even after all these years, she's still not entirely sure of the _intricacies_ of hypnotism, but this, _this,_ she vaguely remembers.

Jane waves a hand. "Oh, no doubt he has."

She raises her eyebrows. "But?"

"But we have her now. We _have_ her," his voice catches, just a little, and she's staring at him, again, like maybe she never really knew him.

"You'll do anything to find him," she says, and it's not a question.

He tilts his head to the side, quick and inscrutable. "Well. Not anything," he says, a little pointedly, gaze unwavering, and it's _different_ , but somehow the same, a choice he has to make (then, back then, he had just a split second, the blink of an eye, he grabbed the gun and shot Hardy, because he'd give his life to find Red John, but not hers; now, the same choice, he has longer to make up his mind, but it's the same decision; not her, never her).

It answers the question neither of them have been brave enough, sure enough, to ask ( _Why is she still safe?_ ), and she understands now, understands that Red John wants her to die at the hand of Patrick Jane

(it is, she allows, almost as brilliant as it is grotesque).

"I'm not going to thank you for not killing me," she says, a little peevishly, and his gaze turns a little curious.

"But you wondered," he says, like it's a fact. "You wondered if I would."

"I did _not_ ," she scoffs (but she _did_ , for that one, horrible second, clutching the phone tight to her ear, as he talked, obliviously, she'd assumed, about the next stage of his plan, his stupid _plan_ , and the Jane she remembers wouldn't, she knew, the Jane who was all strawberries and trust falls and birthday ponies, but this Jane can lie to her for the better part of a year, can torture men remorselessly. This Jane is conscience-less, and she doesn't know him

(or maybe she's known him all along)).

She wonders when she became so transparent to him. Wonders if he's always seen right through her.

Jane's still watching her. "I'm just lucky you couldn't hit the side of a barn at twenty paces," she says, and there's a pause, a silence that hangs, because he _has_ shot and killed before, Hardy and Carter, before she clears her throat.

"Hmm," he hums, before pushing the saucer away from him. "Apologise to the rest of the team for me again, will you?"

"Where are you going?" it's weary and _wary_ , because she's not sure she trusts him. Not sure she ever did.

"I'm sure Agent Darcy will be looking for us-"

" _You_ -" she amends, quickly, a little jokingly.

"-soon enough. But it's been a long couple of days."

She reads between the lines. " _And_ ," she draws out, "you want to go lie on my couch. Fine," she shrugs. "Whatever."

 "Thank you," he says, with a small nod, making a beeline for her office, and he doubles back as soon as he steps around her, fingers curling around the inside of her elbow, breath warm in her ear. "Lisbon. _Thank you_."

 


End file.
